


a dream sequence

by lilacsoutofthedeadland



Series: previews [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Dreams, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-26 01:42:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9856379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsoutofthedeadland/pseuds/lilacsoutofthedeadland
Summary: There once lived a boy in a cupboard under the stairs. Along came a handsome prince…





	

_The boy in the cupboard under the stairs:_

 

The boy with the messy black hair and bright green eyes had been lying on his bed in his dark cupboard. He had not been allowed to eat that night and was terribly hungry, which was not a particularly curious occurrence for 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, in Surrey.

 

What was decidedly curious was that while the boy had been fiddling with the now very rapidly deteriorating Scotch tape on his glasses, a person suddenly popped out of nowhere and landed on his bed, which was not very big, so it was becoming quite too packed for the boy’s personal tastes.

 

But then there was a gentle white light, coming from the end of a…stick that his mysterious guest was holding. It allowed the boy to see what the person looked like.

 

The stranger was another boy, but was a lot bigger than he was. The older boy was very tall, but neither scrawny like the boy nor plump like the boy’s cousin, Dudley. Despite being forced to position himself in an awkward way that prevented him from falling off the small bed, the older boy nonetheless exuded an effortless grace. The green-eyed boy also thought that the young man looked very handsome with his wavy black hair and dark intelligent eyes.

 

The older boy was wearing somewhat peculiar clothes, though, a slightly faded grey and green school uniform with a black robe over it. There was some kind of odd crest with a snake on the robe. The boy belatedly wondered if the older boy could also speak to snakes, but something nameless held him back from asking.

 

_He hoped he wouldn’t be getting in trouble for somehow making a person appear like this. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would be so mad, even if he tried explaining that he had no idea how this happened._

 

Still, despite his apparent oddness, the handsome young man reminded the boy of a storybook about a prince he tried to read a while ago. Dudley had seen him reading it and wrenched it out of his hands before he could ever get to the end of the story.

 

He comes to the conclusion that the older boy must be a prince just like in that storybook, judging by how handsome and mysterious he appears.

 

 _Those two attributes surely must be qualifications, if one is a prince_ , the boy silently reasons to himself, happily.

 

A smooth, pleasant voice brings the boy out of his fairly shy, but nevertheless excited thoughts.

 

“Where are we?” asks the aristocratic young man, with a polite, but distant half-smile.

 

For some reason, a small, private part of the boy wonders how this particular young man would look like with a real smile on his pale face.

 

But.

 

“The cupboard under the stairs,” answers the boy, helpfully.

 

His guest appears to find this amusing, perhaps? The older boy’s dark eyes are growing bright with, is it… _mirth_?

 

 _It’s like they’re_ _burning black stars_.

 

“And…why are you in here?” continues the dark-haired young man, his fleeting half-smile, gone, and replaced with a large, toothy grin that strangely doesn’t seem all that pleased, at all.

 

“This is my room,” the boy patiently explains to the prince.

 

“There are spiders in here, bars on the window, and a cat-flap on the door,” the older boy drawls skeptically, eying the tiny room with pure disdain seemingly swirling in rich, dark eyes.

 

The cat-flap is admittedly somewhat unfamiliar territory to the messy-haired, younger boy, but his memories seem to be telling him that it was a recent addition to the door, over the years?

 

_And the bars…the only things the boy can recall are red hair, friendly freckled faces, and flying cars…_

 

It’s a bit weird, honestly. That he can’t quite remember every single part of his own personal cupboard clearly, despite living in it for all of his admittedly short life, thus far.

 

And it’s not like the cupboard is remotely close to being big enough for the boy to forget any sort of details about.

 

But just because he’s confused, doesn’t mean he should keep the prince waiting any longer.

 

If the prince is like anyone else in the boy’s life, he will hate the boy for being so stupid and strange.

 

So the scrawny, bespectacled boy simply replies, “I know.”

 

The two of them stare back at each other for a while, bright green eyes peering earnestly back at nearly black.

 

Then the boy’s stomach rumbles loudly. He helplessly clutches his stomach and feels his face flush with embarrassment, now looking anywhere but at the handsome young man.  

 

“You didn’t eat?” softly enquires the older boy, dark eyes glinting with something sharp and intense that the green-eyed boy does not recognize.

 

The boy shivers, not quite in fear, but with a sense of unexplained foreboding.

 

“I was sent here, without supper, because Dudley was trying to break my glasses again,” the boy level-headedly takes off his glasses and shows the young man the shabby Scotch tape and its general crookedness.

 

“I made him go outside the house by accident, while I was running away from him. I don’t know how I did it, and I said I was really sorry, but they were still so mad at me.”

 

His stomach continues to misbehave, with the boy flushing again in mortification.

 

Wordlessly, the prince moves his…stick, and a large, fluffy muffin and a tall glass of milk appear out of thin air.

 

_But, oh, there are large pieces of chocolate chunks embedded into the muffin, and the milk has been so generously poured to almost the top of the glass!_

 

The boy mutters a quick thanks before gingerly taking the food, making sure not to eat messily in front of his guest, though it is a bit hard on account of the food being the most delicious meal the boy has ever had the opportunity to taste.

 

When he finally lets the last chocolate chunk melt in his mouth, the young boy looks up, seeing the prince regarding him with an unreadable expression.

 

“U-um, if it wouldn’t be too much of a bother, I would like to know your name,” the scarred boy begins to nervously request, in reaction to the attention. “I’d like to thank you for the food. I really appreciate it…” he declares with great sincerity, and then trails off, unsure if he’s overstepped his bounds.

 

The handsome prince appears conflicted for a second, attractive features contorting for a visible moment, but is ultimately gracious enough to answer the young boy.

 

Faintly grimacing, almost like he had found something about his own name particularly distasteful, he carefully breathes out, “My name is Tom Riddle.”

 

_“A strange boy with a strange name.”_

 

A hauntingly familiar, ladylike voice in his head suddenly utters these quiet, judgmental words, like a long-lost and forgotten memory he’s never had.

 

 _But isn’t that not a very nice thing to think_ , the boy muses, e _specially when Tom has been nothing but kind, this whole time_?

 

“What is your name?” the prince, um, _Tom_ , asks, so gently, while gazing thoughtfully at the boy, who is unaccustomed to anyone ever even wanting to know such a silly, unimportant thing.

 

The boy freezes. He can’t…he can’t remember, all of a sudden.

 

How curious. And also rather disquieting. He tries to think of the closest thing-

 

_“Freak.”_

 

Isn’t that what his aunt and uncle call him? And Dudley.

 

A bit at a loss, the boy turns back to his new companion, but quickly grasps that he must have repeated that last word in his head, _aloud_ , without realizing.  

 

The change in his handsome guest is immediate. The boy does not think Tom is like the prince in the storybook anymore.

 

_Princes don’t have furious pitch black eyes that flicker like sparkling red rubies._

 

“That is not your name,” Tom seethes, with a very severe, livid expression, but the green-eyed boy doesn’t feel so bad because for some reason, he can feel that none of that anger is directed specifically towards him.

 

“My aunt and uncle call me that,” the boy tries his best to inform Tom Riddle, the not-prince, at a complete loss of how to make anything better.

 

He didn’t mean to offend the older, handsome boy. He just doesn’t understand at all why not knowing his own name would be so bad.

 

_After all, other people learned to stop asking, long ago, because he simply wasn’t worth the trouble._

 

“Your name is Hadrian Peverell,” his handsome stranger states this with a steady certainty that frankly boggles the boy’s mind.

 

In retrospect, maybe it is actually very unsettling that he cannot remember his own name, but while the H and P sound right, that particular name just sounds like muddled, pretentious nonsense to his ears.

 

“I…I don’t think that’s right…” the boy eventually admits, with the softest voice he’s ever had to use in his life.

 

His green eyes are locked onto black eyes, and then he feels a foreign, but bizarrely comforting presence enter his fuzzy head.

 

He has no idea what his name is.

 

He doesn’t even think he knows _who_ he is.

 

Silence.

 

 _“Those dirty, worthless muggles-”_ viciously snarls out Tom Riddle; dark eyes shining like cut obsidian, before, once again, switching to a bloody crimson.

 

The boy does not know what suddenly brought this on, or what exactly a ‘muggle’ is, but assumes it might be a sort of grownup swear, judging by how angry his unexpected guest has become.

 

His cupboard is falling apart. Sharp, splintering planks and scraps of wood are ripping themselves apart with mindless abandon, leaving behind a gaping, maw-like abyss in the space the old, creaking floorboards previously occupied.

 

The boy distractedly wonders if the spiders that had resided in the cupboard are okay. He’d like to think that they’re fine.

 

Miraculously, neither he nor Tom are being injured, much less affected by their collapsing reality in any conceivable way, almost as if being protected by some type of, well, _magic_.

 

_But magic is not real, and so this must be a dream._

_But then why does this all feel so real?_

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I've been lurking the Tomarry tag for some time, and have finally decided to write my own take on their complex relationship. This work is actually a part of a standard Harry-goes-back-in-time-to-Tom's-era fic that I was working on. It was already mostly written (this particular scene, definitely not the entire fic!!), though I've revised it. But recently, I've been hit by the idea for a Tomarry fairy tale series, and really want to focus on that, for the time being.
> 
> To give some background for this piece, Harry has already been sorted into Slytherin, and is going by Hadrian Peverell. He and Tom have just established a tentative friendship, after some extensive communication over serious discussions. Harry is dreaming, and completely unaware of this. On the other hand, Tom has somehow stumbled into Harry's dream, and is completely aware of what is going on. In this dream, Harry has reverted to being about 11 years old, though he does still have his memories, though they are very jumbled. An example is that he is mixing up elements of the cupboard and the smallest bedroom, which is because his unconscious mind is focusing more on his true feelings of his abuse than actual factual reality. Essentially, his subconscious believes it more important to show Tom the hints of childhood abuse because in reality, Harry naturally acts selflessly and is kind to Tom despite seeing through him, and while Tom finds that fascinating, he feels like Harry does not truly understand him or his hatred of muggles. 
> 
> Additionally, the quote "A strange boy with a strange name," belongs to Helena Ravenclaw in The Deathly Hallows - Part 2. I can't quite remember if she also said that in the book, but I digress. 
> 
> Thank you very much for taking a look at this. My writing experience has been admittedly mostly academic, but I really wanted to at least get something more creative out. ...I should also eventually get to drawing something to serve as a usericon, haha.
> 
> (And sorry for using 'boy,' a lot, but I was adamant in not even mentioning Harry by name, to emphasize how confused he has really been feeling, deep down, throughout his entire ordeal...being in a dream, being a child, and being in a different time period. I'm not sorry for using 'handsome,' a lot because Harry's thoughts are a mix of his past and present thoughts, and we all know that Harry constantly referred to Tom Riddle as handsome, as he got older and learned to appreciate that fiiiiiine aspiring dark lord.)
> 
> I would appreciate comments or kudos, but it's also lovely that you've at least stopped by and taken a look! Thank you!
> 
> (Ack, and sorry for this absurdly long note!)


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